Page 58 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Cahra blurted out, ‘The weapon is a man?’A man called Hael, just like the capital.There was no way that was a coincidence.

‘Once. Now, it is inconsequential.’ Hael raised an eyebrow, chuckling. ‘And the Scion is a woman.’

‘Inconsequential?’ Her head spun. Not a sword, or a shield, or any manner of weapon she could forge. The weapon – it wasalive!

‘It has never occurred prior.’

‘Well, maybe the Scion has never been a blacksmith, either.’ Cahra braced one arm behind her, still in shock.

Hael quirked his chin at her, then at the tattoo on her wrist, as if she’d just answered some unknown question. He sat cross-legged in front of Cahra, reminding her of meeting Wyldaern beside that pebbly stream.

‘You have questions.’

She rallied her wits. He’d worn breeches underneath his robe, thank the Seers, but it hadn’t saved her from Hael shirtless, his hulking, marble chest fully on display, the rippling muscles of his stomach tapering down to…

‘Yes,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘All I know is what Luminaux’s royals have said, and Wyldaern – the Seer – and I have barely had a chance to talk. I need to know that what the Prince told me is actually true and that I’m not going mad! Who are the Oracles and what happened to them? How does the prophecy work? Why are you trapped here in Hael’stromia? How are you trapped here – how are you possible at all? How are we here, in these dreams, these visions? And why did I craft the Sigil of the Seers?Why me?’

The silence was long after Cahra had rattled off her questions.

When he spoke, Hael’s voice was gentle. ‘Much, I wish to tell you. And much, I may. But some of your questions are for the Oracle. It is not my place to reveal that which is Hers. This is the way of the second omen.’

‘So the second omen does involve me?’ Cahra’s voice was small.

Hael bent to her eye level and smiled. ‘You shall find that everything involves you.’

‘ButWHY?’

Cahra looked up into the fire-lit rubies of Hael’s eyes, so much lovelier up close. When she’d first seen his flames, she’d felt as if her bones were trying to leap from her body. But looking into them now, all she felt was awe and the same feeling in her core as when she’d met Wyldaern. Cahra didn’t need to note eye contact, tone of voice or body language; none of it mattered, because in her heart, she knew that she was safe. With Hael.

‘Did you call to me tonight, like you did in our last vision? Is that why I’m here?’ The question seemed to come to Cahra from far away.

‘No,’ Hael said, surprised. ‘I felt your pain, and I wished to intervene, but I did not summon you.’ He thought for a moment.‘Perhaps, it was you who summoned me?’

But that’s impossible, Cahra thought.

I was asleep.

This time when Hael smiled, twin sets of fangs delicately brushed his lilac lips. ‘Now, to your questions.’

CHAPTER 25

Cahra awoke to silence; no clamour of weapons as Raiden’s people trained and laughed, and no morning light or gemstone eyes. Nothing but her body tangled in silk sheets, chest tight, in one of Luminaux’s ample guest bedrooms. The candle beside her was a smoking stump.

As if Hael himself had been there, watching over her.

Hael was right. Her negative feelingshadreturned to her. She sighed.

Cahra sat up, peering across the moonlit room. It was past midnight so she fell back against the impossibly soft mattress and lay there. No more caves, or camps, or anything else to experience travelling with Thierre. He was home now, he and his high-born bride.

Cahra’s future was her own again. It should have made her happy.

But all she felt was a yawning emptiness, a void.

Not ‘the veil and void’ – where they’d met in her visions – as Hael had called it with his resonant, otherworldly voice that could span time and space to find her, to call to her and know she was safe. Which was how she felt with him: safe. And flustered. The memory of Hael towering over her, so darkly handsome, with his body that made her teeth, her tongue, so unwieldy in her mouth she fumbled for her words… She didn’t know what to make of it, of him and their ‘abreption’. Except that he had offered her the truth. And the answers he had given to her questions – she needed to talk to Wyldaern. But it was the dead of night.

Cahra looked about the space. Drawing the sheet around her, she moved for the sunroom and gazed out over the sleeping city, firelights in its homesteads faint and few. The night sky reminded her of Thierre’s eyes and she shut her own to the painful thought. At least the palace was quiet.

She sighed, grappling with her own void, the one Thierre’s actions had caused in her. She didn’t want to think about the Prince, but he was everywhere she looked: the enormous four-poster bed she’d slept in, even the walls, the floor, the gilded ceiling of this grand room. Everything in it was gold and mirrored glass and great, gaudy colours; and suddenly, how she longed for Kolyath’s depressing greys. At least she knew what to expect there, how to survive. Life in her kingdom hadn’t been good, but it was familiar.

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